Thai Morlam 45rpms remastered — new series I

Awhile back I write about some Thai morlam 45rpms that I uploaded to my youtube channel. Morlam, sometimes transliterated as “morlum,” is folk music from the Mekong borderlands of Thailand and Laos. As I wrote before, I scored about a dozen amazing 45rpms of morlam music in Nong Khai back in 2012.

The youtube videos are fun but the sound quality isn’t so good. I also did not get the titles translated.

All that is changing. I’ve decided to remaster the tracks as best I can into WAV files and post those for folks to download. I’m also translating the album titles with the help of our man on the scene in Thailand, Dr Paul Bruthiaux.

The new series will present both sides of the 45rpm. I will upload occasionally, though I’ll try to get one per week until I run out of source material.

The sound still isn’t great. The turntable I used automatically transfers the sound to MP3 and unfortunately the left channel is weak in nearly all the transfers from that turntable, but as the original records are now in storage in California and I’m at my desk at SAE in Jakarta, this is as good as it will get for awhile.